What’s the scoop on pub­lish­ing? What Jew­ish books are agents, edi­tors, and pub­lish­ers espe­cial­ly excit­ed for us to read? JBC’s series Book­Watch is here to answer these fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions. Each month, a pub­lish­ing insid­er writes an email to intro­duce them­selves, give us a behind-the-scenes look at their work, and tell us about forth­com­ing Jew­ish books they can’t wait to ush­er into the world.

After receiv­ing a PhD in art his­to­ry from Lon­don Uni­ver­si­ty, I worked in the com­mer­cial art world, and then as a mem­ber of the Roy­al House­hold in the Roy­al Palace in Ams­ter­dam before set­ting up Ams­ter­dam Pub­lish­ers in 2012. It is the largest inter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ing house focus­ing on Holo­caust memoirs. 

When I worked at Christie’s in Lon­don and at Sothe­by’s in Ams­ter­dam, I used to trav­el exten­sive­ly, view­ing Picas­sos in Scan­di­navia, valu­ing works of art in a palaz­zo in Pad­ua, or assess­ing the inven­to­ry of a mod­ern art gallery in Jerusalem. My life is total­ly dif­fer­ent now, but much more ful­fill­ing. I pride myself on hav­ing a close rela­tion­ship with my authors, who are all Holo­caust sur­vivors, their chil­dren or grand­chil­dren. Although I’m based in Ams­ter­dam, I have zero books in Dutch and no authors who reside in the Nether­lands. The major­i­ty come from the US, Aus­tralia, Cana­da, the UK, and Israel. 

Where­as almost all of my authors are Jew­ish, I am not — I am an agnos­tic. When I start­ed out, I felt a lit­tle uncom­fort­able about that: Who was I to pub­lish these very per­son­al sto­ries? But, espe­cial­ly with the alarm­ing surge in anti­semitism, it is cru­cial to keep pub­lish­ing Holo­caust sto­ries. I am tru­ly appalled about what is going on in the world today. In 1930s Ger­many, the silent mass­es turned a blind eye. In this day and age, we can­not afford to stay qui­et while West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is rapid­ly being dis­man­tled from with­in. If we want to pre­serve our demo­c­ra­t­ic ideals, we must act. Each of us must do what is with­in our pow­er. Since Octo­ber 7, I feel an even greater sense of urgency. Pub­lish­ing Holo­caust mem­oirs and try­ing to dis­sem­i­nate them as wide­ly as pos­si­ble hope­ful­ly con­tributes to fight­ing antisemitism.

Also, Holo­caust sto­ries are not just about suf­fer­ing. They are also about resilience and an aston­ish­ing capac­i­ty for hope. They are pow­er­ful accounts of sur­vival, strength, and a choice to embrace life. Each and every time I read them, I am struck by the courage and opti­mism they project. We can learn so much from them! And yes, it might not be the most com­mer­cial of gen­res, but I think it is very worth­while to pub­lish these tes­ti­monies. I actu­al­ly feel sad that I run one of the very few, per­haps even the only pub­lish­ing house in the world, that focus­es sole­ly on Holo­caust true sto­ries. Rather than pub­lish­ing schol­ar­ly books with end­less foot­notes, I believe in sto­ry­telling. What is more pow­er­ful than the actu­al tes­ti­monies of sur­vivors, and sto­ries told by their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren? The num­ber of sur­vivors is dwin­dling rapid­ly, but their descen­dants have tak­en on the respon­si­bil­i­ty of telling the sto­ries, and each gen­er­a­tion does it in a dif­fer­ent way. They’re fascinating.

I’ve had remark­able suc­cess with some of my books. Nechama Birn­baum’s The Red­head of Auschwitz, the true sto­ry of her resilient grand­moth­er, Rosie Green­stein, is one of them. Its suc­cess is actu­al­ly not because of me but because of Nechama, whose Insta­gram account @theredheadofauschwitz explod­ed after I pub­lished her grand­moth­er’s amaz­ing sto­ry in 2021. The book has been released in eleven lan­guages. Odd­ly enough, no French pub­lish­er has shown any inter­est in the book as yet. The Appren­tice of Buchen­wald (2023) by Oren Schnei­der is also very suc­cess­ful. This book was trans­lat­ed into Hebrew and Ger­man and will be pub­lished short­ly in Span­ish. It is very inter­est­ing to see that Ger­mans read a lot of books on the Sec­ond World War, includ­ing Holo­caust sur­vivor sto­ries. The books I’ve pub­lished in the Ger­man lan­guage do very well.

The num­ber of Holo­caust tes­ti­monies is inevitably decreas­ing, but this year I was still able to pub­lish six, two of which were pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished tes­ti­monies. On July 4, I pub­lished Ibo­ja Wandall-Holm’s The Mul­ber­ry Tree. The Sto­ry of a Life Before and After the Holo­caust, a work that had nev­er been pub­lished in Eng­lish before. At 103-years-old, Ibo­ja is still alive and resides in Denmark. 

Many sur­vivors’ sto­ries were declined by the major pub­lish­ing hous­es, so they sim­ply self-pub­lished. When­ev­er I hap­pen to find a good sto­ry that has been pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished but has a very low sales rank­ing, I try to con­tact the fam­i­ly and see whether we can col­lab­o­rate on giv­ing them a much larg­er audi­ence. Spe­cial­iz­ing in Holo­caust sto­ries means that Holo­caust muse­ums, libraries, and read­ers know where to find me.

This year and last year I rep­re­sent­ed my pub­lish­ing house at the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Librar­i­ans con­fer­ences in San Diego and Philadel­phia. Next year I hope to be able to go to ALA in Chica­go, and may well rent a house to accom­mo­date all my authors who are help­ing me out in the kiosk! Since I am pub­lish­ing very much under the radar, being based in Ams­ter­dam, I need to trav­el. I try to attend the Frank­furt Book Fair and the Lon­don Book Fair as often as I can. This year I will be speak­ing at the 35th Annu­al Con­fer­ence of Holo­caust Sur­vivors held from Sep­tem­ber 12 – 15 in Paris.

But since I am a one-woman band, I don’t always find the time to do any­thing but pub­lish books. This year I will be pub­lish­ing more than twen­ty books, but I decline the major­i­ty of man­u­scripts that are sub­mit­ted for pub­li­ca­tion, or I ask authors to rewrite them. My aim is to keep the qual­i­ty of books as high as possible. 

I’m very proud of the fact that my authors can com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er in a pri­vate online group. It’s a safe envi­ron­ment in which they share con­tacts and advice, and sup­port each oth­er’s events. It’s such a joy to watch the com­mu­ni­ty grow. At the moment, some one hun­dred authors are part of this grow­ing online com­mu­ni­ty. In addi­tion, we’ve had two in-per­son author gath­er­ings in New York, both gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed by the Dutch Con­sulate. Since authors who live in Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Israel, and South Amer­i­ca have been miss­ing out, I decid­ed to do a large Zoom event in Sep­tem­ber, 2025, hop­ing they can all join in. It is won­der­ful to see my authors — both obser­vant and non-obser­vant — com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and form friend­ships. Some orga­nize events togeth­er. I think it’s very impor­tant in this time and age that we all collaborate.